Wednesday, August 27, 2014

I noticed that you borrowed a $725-million super-yacht from your friend and United Arab Emirates (UAE) Deputy Prime Minister Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan so you and your entourage could watch the recent World Cup in style.

Is using Sheikh Mansour's super-yacht part of your research into the human rights of Middle Eastern oil regimes? For example, as a public advocate for gay rights, did you learn that homosexuality in the UAE is illegal? Were you able to establish, as any superficial Google search would have shown you, that flogging is used in the UAE as a punishment for criminal offences such as drug use, adultery and prostitution?

Did you read media reports that, in 2008, an Australian woman working in the UAE reported a rape to the authorities and was imprisoned for eight months for having sex outside of marriage?

Closer to home, Leo, are you aware that researchers for California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard found there are 13 oil fields in California plus crude oil blends originating in at least six other countries that generate a higher level of upstream greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) than that of our Canadian oilsands blends?

Did you know that same study found the "dirtiest oil in North America" is not produced in Canada, but just outside your own hometown of Los Angeles, where the Placerita oil field generates about twice the level of upstream emissions as Canada's oilsands? Actually, the title of "world's dirtiest oil" goes to Brass crude blend from Nigeria, where the uncontrolled release of methane during the oil extraction process generates upstream GHG emissions that is over four times higher than Canadian diluted bitumen.